Big Book only shared reading

The children in the big book only reading approach read big books that were slightly above their instructional reading level. Books were from the Ready to Read series (Ministry of Education, 2001). Big books are almost 40cm high and 30cm wide, illustrated with large print for teaching groups of up to 30 pupils at a time. In the present study, the researcher used a whiteboard stand to hold the big book, so every pupil could see the big book. The pupils were sitting either on chairs or on the floor.

The “wellbelow” ability group started with the story Car Shopping by Dot Meharry at red level (5–5.5 years). The “below” ability group started with the story

Keep Trying by Jane Buxton at yellow level (5.5–6 years). The “at” ability group started with The hole in the King’s sock by Dot Meharry at orange level (6.5–7 years).

Table 3.6 presents the titles of the stories and reading levels for each ability group in the present study.

Table 3.6

Titles of the Stories and Reading Levels of Big Book Reading Lessons for Each Ability Group

Lesson “Well below” ability “below” ability “at” ability

1–3 Story: Car shopping

Level: 5–6years

Story: Keep trying Level: 5–6 years

Story: The hole in the King’s sock

Level: 6–7 years

4–5 Story: What does

Greedy cat like? Level: 5–6 years

Story: Lunch for Greedy Cat? Level: 5–6 years

Story: A good idea Level: 6–7 years 6–9 Story: Greedy cat’s

door

Level: 5–6 years

Story: Hissing Bush Level: 5–6 years

Story: Earthquake Level: 6–7 years 10–12 Story: Keep trying

Level: 5–6 years

Story: Magnetic Max Level: 5–6 years

Story: Firefighter Fred Level: 7–8 years Source: Hartley (1999); Ministry of Education (2010a).

The researcher used the concepts and ideas from Ready to Read: Teacher support material (Ministry of Education, 2001). Each story lasted for three reading sessions. During the lesson, the researcher read the Big Book several times to and with the pupils.

Using the Ministry guidelines (2001), in the first reading the researcher read the book once to the group aloud, pointing at the words as she read, and only stopped to discuss an illustration, or predict what would happen on the next page of the text. For example, in the story Car Shopping by Dot Meharry, these are some Ministry guidelines for the teacher in the first reading:

x Discuss the cover illustration. “What do you think the story is going to be about?” x Read the title with the group. Read the names of the author and the illustrator. x Page 2–before the children start to read, talk about the colour of the car.

x Page 8–draw the children’s attention to the exclamation mark and the use of large print. Which car would you have chosen?” “Why?”

The Ministry provides teaching ideas when children revisit the text in the classroom. Teachers can choose to do one or two activities/tasks during each reading session such as:

x Listen to the children reread the text, observing their attempts to self-monitor, cross-check, and read expressively.

x Locate words in the text that start with “c”, “l”, or “w”. List other words that start with the same letters

x Find the word “blue” in the text. Can you think of other words that start with “bl”? Make a list. Do the same for “sh” or “gr”.

x Use the whiteboard to examine the contraction “we’ll”. Can you work out what they are? Write “we will” on the whiteboard, and show the children how the apostrophe replaces the “wi”.

(Ministry of Education, 2001, Teacher’s Notes-“Car Shopping”) Table 3.7 presents a description of the kind of big book instruction used in the present study. In the current study, the researcher read the text with the pupils as choral reading in the second and third reading. In the third reading, the researcher drew pupils’ attention to one or two of the following things: phonics (e.g., the GR in “Greedy Cat”), punctuation (e.g., speech marks, full stops, capital letters), figurative language (e.g., opposites –“little” and “big”, “old” and “new”), or an aspect of the text structure such as plot or character.

Table 3.7

The Description of the Kind of Big Book Instruction Used in the Present Study

What the Big Book shared reading instruction in the present study does do……

What the Big Book shared reading instruction in the present study does not do……

x Uses guidelines from the Ministry of Education (2001) for big book shared reading –“reading to”

x Uses different teaching for each of the 3 average instructional reading levels represented by the three different ability groups

x Uses analytic phonics- see guidelines from the Ministry of Education (2001) x Uses implicit phonics instruction– as in

Ministry of Education (2001) x Uses picture clues

x Uses sentence context x Punctuation

x Story vocabulary

x Prediction and discussion

x No explicit phonics x No spelling

x No writing

xNo guided reading “reading with”

x No independent reading “reading by” x No home involvement by parents

Here is an example of the big book lesson for the “below” ability group. Introduction: Story-Magnetic Max by Parker (2006) (3rd reading). Researcher: Remember Max and his magnet are hiding in a tree. What is Magnetic Max up to? Can anyone tell me? Yes, good memory. Let’s read the story one more time, who can read the first page for us? (Pupils take turns to read the story, and correct any mispronunciations during reading).

Lesson: Magnetic Max (3rd reading)

Researcher: We talked about the term “nouns are naming words” last week, like in the story, the words “tree”, “park”, “pocket”, “dog”, and “skateboard” are all nouns. I am going to tell you another type of a noun, called “Proper Nouns”, which could be the name of a person, city or a planet. In the story, “Julia”, “Max”, “Cookie” and “Joe” are all proper nouns. Can you think of any other examples? Yes, your name is a proper noun. Well done! (The researcher presents the below information on the whiteboard).

Researcher: Good, I want you to think about Joe, Julia, and Felix. What did they do when they walked past the “strange tree”? Did they try to find a way to solve the problems? The following chart is presented on the whiteboard, and the researcher writes down pupil’s responses.

The different ways they dealt with the problem of the “strange tree” Joe

Julia Felix

Researcher: Well done and good thinking everyone! Now, I want you to take a seat and complete the Quiz on /ea/.

In this condition, over the twelve weeks, the researcher read twelve different big books, that is, four big books for each ability subgroup. Pupils read each book aloud three times. Appendix F2 presents detailed lesson plans for the first, sixth and twelfth lessons.